Meningoencephalitis
by Hazel Fior
Summary: First in the Remember Me Series. During 'Intervention', Spike loses his memory, and the Scooby gangs must help him.


Note: this begins during 'Intervention', but the Buffy-bot was never built, nor was any of the Scooby gang aware that Spike had been captured by Glory.

The apartment's main door burst open suddenly, revealing two of her minions propelling forward a compact man with a shock of white hair. Moving into the room, they presented the man between them.

"Stunning one, we believe he is *the key*."

Glory hopped off the couch she had been lounging on and approached the stranger in disbelief. "Really? That's fantabulous - and impossible." She gestured at the man with a dismissive shake of her head. "He can't be the key. Because, see, the key has to be pure. This is a vampire. Lesson number one, vampires equal impure."

Spike nodded vigorously and spoke with more than a hint of desperation. "Yeah. Damn right, I'm impure. I'm as impure as the driven yellow snow." He turned his head toward the minion on his right. "Let me go," he ordered.

The minion in turned looked to Glory for instruction. She ignored both of them and kept talking. "You can't even brain-suck a vampire. He's completely useless." With that, she turned her back on all of them. "Get rid of him."

Immediately, the minion on Spike's left rushed forward to whisper in the god's ear. Her head jerked around to examine the vampire one more time. "Precious? Let's take a peek at you, precious." She advanced upon the blond a second time, predator-like.

Grabbing the front of his shirt, she pulled him toward her until they were nose-to-nose. "Doesn't look very fancy to me," she growled at the minions. "But if the Slayer protects him, maybe appearances are deceiving." With one final heave, she threw him across the room, onto the bed. With a sudden gleam in her eyes, she grinned at the distressed demon. "Maybe there's something on the inside," she said, and thrust her finger straight into his chest. Ignoring Spike's screams, she then placed her hands on each side of her head. "Or maybe here?" Spike felt a rush of pain flowing through his head, then all went black. 

*********

He woke up in a room. No, not a room. From where he lay on a floor, he could see dirt, dust and cobwebs. Everything seemed gray, although he couldn't really be certain because only one of his eyes appeared to be working, though he had no idea why. Sitting up slowly, his body screamed at him from every bone, muscle and joint. Had he been in a fight? Or an accident? He gradually became aware that he couldn't remember. In fact, he couldn't remember anything of the day before, or the day before that. Everything seemed to be a kind of hazy blank. He froze when he realized he couldn't even remember his own name, or where he lived. He couldn't remember *anything*.

He got to his feet with extreme difficulty and looked around the enclosure again. It still appeared gray, but now he noticed several large stone rectangles several yards away. Crypts. The dirt and cobwebs suddenly made sense. The television and chair next to them did not. He was in a mausoleum, although why he was there, and what had happened to him, were still mysteries. 

The door wasn't hard to find. Outside, there appeared to be a rather nondescript, run of the mill cemetery. Run of the mill except for the occasional palm tree. He couldn't be in England, then. Maybe Central or South America, but the inscriptions on the gravestones were all in english. The States, then. He had to be in the States. 

The rapid approach of footsteps jarred him out of his thoughts. It was a human, he could tell by the heartbeat. He might not know his name or his exact whereabouts, but he knew without a doubt that he was a vampire, and the demon inside him hungered for blood. 

It was a tiny blonde girl, walking without a care in the world through the burial ground at night. Smiling to himself, the young man crouched out of sight in the shadows of the mausoleum, waiting for her to come closer.

As she came into range, he quickly sprang out of his hiding place, knocking her to the ground and looking over her, trying to get a clear angle to her neck. Unexpectedly, the girl kicked up with her legs, throwing him clear over her head. In the instant it took him to get back to his feet, not only was she standing, but she had a stake pressed up against his ripped black t-shirt directly over his heart. He froze, waiting for her to drive the stake in and end it all.

"Spike?! What the hell are you doing?" Buffy yelled at the immobilized demon.

That stopped any thoughts of trying to fight and kill her. "You know me?" he asked, shocked.

Hazel eyes widened as she stared at the blond vampire in front of her. "Of course I know you. What's wrong with yo-" her eyes suddenly narrowed in suspicion. "What game are you trying to play now?" 

"No games, I swear. You say my name is Spike? And we know each other?" he looked her over carefully, then sighed. "I don't remember you, pet. I don't remember a sodding thing."

Buffy just stared at him in confusion. "What?"

"I woke up in there just a few minutes ago," he gestured at the mausoleum, "and I couldn't remember anything. My bleedin head hurts, too, like I might have banged it pretty hard on something. What the hell happened to me? Do you know?"

"Well, of course you woke up in there. That's where you live. You really can't remember anything? Anything at all?"

Spike seemed to think hard for a moment, then shook his head with another dejected sigh. "Nothing."

"Well, this little snafu smells like a Giles problem to me. Come on, Anastasia, let's go see what we can do." 

Still eyeing him a little suspiciously, Buffy half-led, half-dragged the unhappy and bewildered blond down the street to the Magic Box.

*********

The older human peered at him over the rims of his glasses. "This is really quite fascinating. You're sure you can recall nothing at all?"

Spike felt his irritation growing out of control. "For the fifth time, yes, I can't remember a bloody thing. What's wrong with you people? Why can't you just believe me?"

The question was answered by the attractive brunette man sitting on Spike's other side. "Believe you? Sure, why not? You've never done anything to... Oh, wait, you mean besides trying to kill us on numerous occasions *and* trying to turn us all against each other? *I* don't see any reason for distrust, do you?" The youth's words were lost on Spike as he fell into a sea of chocolate brown eyes. If only the piercing sarcasm hadn't been so apparent in the tone, the vampire might seriously have considered beginning something with this luscious treat. However, sarcasm intact, it was clear the boy hated him. Pity, that.

"I don't get it," Buffy said finally, "I mean, how could this have happened? I thought vamps had that fast-healing thing going for them. What could have been powerful enough to erase Spike's memories without killing him?"

The Watcher took off his glasses and began polishing them absent-mindedly. "I'll admit I've never heard of anything remotely like this happening before. Assuming that Spike is telling us the truth, this is an undocumented occurrence as far as the Council's records indicate."

The shy girl sitting next to the redhead in the corner spoke up unexpectedly. "What if it's the chip?" she asked quietly.

Immediately all eyes in the room focused on her, making her drop her chin and stare at the floor. Nevertheless, she continued in the same almost inaudible voice. "If something happened to the chip, it could have damaged the brain tissue around it, making Spike forget everything. People usually develop amnesia after trauma to their frontal lobes, which was probably where those scientists put the chip in the first place."

Real worry began to be apparent in all the faces around the circular table. All the faces, that is, except Spike's. "Chip? Scientists?" he asked, his brow furrowing in confusion for the not first time that night. 

He was ignored completely.

Giles was the first one to speak. "Buffy, when Spike attacked you in the cemetery, was he able to hurt you without the chip going off?" 

There was a minute pause as the petite blonde pieced together the earlier confrontation, her eyes growing huge and round as she realized the implications. "Yes! He did! The chip didn't go off at all! Spike's chipless!" With that, she pulled a trusty wooden stake from thin air and prepared to slam it between the vampire's ribs.

"No Buffy wait!" This from the redhead, Willow, who up until that point had been content to simply watch events unfold. Her panicked voice was enough to make the Slayer hesitate with the wood only inches from Spike's unbeating heart. "We can't just kill him," the striking redhead went on hurriedly, "he doesn't even know who he is! It's like he's still helpless, but in a different way."

"Yeah, in the way where he's about to kill us all," Xander commented dryly. 

"*No*! He didn't even remember he had a chip, and he's been sitting here for an hour *not* killing anyone. He's not Spike anymore. He's..." Here she broke off, unable to imagine - let alone name - what Spike now was.

"So what's your plan then, Will?" asked the nummy brunette. "Just sit back and wait for the Big Bad to regain his memory so that Buffy will have to kick his pale English ass again?"

"No. I don't know. But we can't just stake him." Her resolve face was apparent for all the world to see. 

"Well," the captivating young man rejoined, "I for one won't feel safe with an unchipped William the Bloody running around Sunnydale. I say we either stake his undead hide or ship him out of town."

"Amazingly enough, I think that Xander might be correct," Giles agreed. "Spike is a danger to the general population. Of course, he'd be that way no matter where we sent him, though, so I don't see how getting him out of town would help matters."

"Unless he went to stay with Angel," Tara nearly whispered. Again she was the center of attention. "I mean, Angel is his...grandsire? Doesn't that mean that Spike is sort of his responsibility anyway?" 

"WHAT?" Xander nearly exploded. "You mean to tell me that all this time, when Spike was mooching off me and the G-man, he could've been mooching off of Deadboy? Legitimately? Why was this never brought up before?"

"It wasn't important before," Giles answered calmly, polishing his glasses again.

"Wasn't important? What kind of -" the teenager was cut off when the Watcher raised a hand, effectively cutting off the argument before it could begin.

"Are we all in agreement, then, that Spike should be sent to Angel?" the older man asked. Four heads nodded mutely, Buffy dropping her gaze at the mention of her ex-boyfriend.

So it was settled then. Spike would very shortly be on his way to L.A.

The blond vampire looked again at the faces around the table. "Who's Angel?" he asked.


End file.
